After actress Gina Rodriguez’s Instagram video debacle, Nicole Vassell wonders why we keep returning to a conversation about the boundaries of the N-word – and why it’s hardly worth our time
This life is unpredictable – day by day, you can never be sure of the weather outside, what’s happening with Brexit, or the government in general! But luckily, there are some things that you can rely upon to have a sense of security – and as sure as the sun rises in the east, you be sure that every month or so, there’ll be a hotly-discussed debate about the N-word, who can use it, and why.
At the time of writing, this topic had most recently been reignited by the actress Gina Rodriguez, and her decision to post a video of herself rapping along to Fugees’ ‘Ready Or Not’. As she gets her makeup applied by an artist, Rodriguez raps the line: ‘Niggas give me heebie-jeebies’, before laughing and ending the clip. Remarkably, the Jane The Virgin star gave this video to the world out of her own accord; she wasn’t caught in the background of someone else’s video, nor was this posted from an alternative social media account. Rodriguez filmed and shared this video from her own Instagram account, as if she was completely unaware of the uproar that it’d cause – shocking, seeing as how scenarios like these have very rarely ended well in the past.
And as expected, there was a near-instant backlash to the video, with people calling for an immediate withdrawal of support from her projects. (Personally, as a fan of Jane The Virgin, I’m grateful that I’ve finished the series before the lead actress’ massive fall from grace: no moral dilemma for me!) However, there was also a side that argued for Gina Rodriguez’s forgiveness – reasons including her claim to Afro-Latin heritage, and her allegedly being raised appreciating hip-hop music, a genre in which the term is used with vigour.
But rather than delving into why non-Black people shouldn’t really be offering opinions on whether this reclaimed slur, with centuries of painful history and reformation behind it, should be a part of their vocabulary, I instead want to call for a moratorium on the discussion in general. Why is ownership of the N-word such a hot debate every time someone gets themselves in trouble with it? By now, it should be simple enough – if it’s not ‘for you’, it’s not for you, and you should probably erase it from your personal dictionary.
There’s such a fascination with the boundaries of the N-word that it muddies the waters of issues that actually have some significance to our daily lives. In order to have a claim to the N-word, some people pull up DNA test results, and pictures of parents in some misguided mission to try and determine blackness, and therefore, a free pass to be able to join in with songs like Jay-Z and Kanye’s track about having fun in France. It’s a custody battle that seems to only exist for this particular reclaimed slur, and it’s rarely worth our time.
Truly, being able to say the N-word without fear of backlash is not much of a privilege – being able to say the N-word doesn’t save the life of a Black person unfairly targeted by a police officer, nor does it guarantee that you’ll be treated without prejudice in a job interview. If people were less concerned about justifying why they should be able to use one word, and more in tune with the literal issues that face Black people every day, collectively our time would be much better used.
To quote actress and activist Rose McGowan: ‘Imagine how tired we are.’ We already know the answers to these questions! Whether you want to use the N-word or not is each individual person’s prerogative; and if you’re not a Black person, then just be prepared for what comes next. But as we prepare to step into a whole new decade, perhaps we can finally leave this ‘debate’ in 2019?
